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“lurking about the neighbourhood”: Slave Economy and Petit Marronage in Virginia and North Carolina, 1730 to 1860

Nevius, Marcus Peyton
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7189-4492
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1460667359

Abstract Details

2016, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, History.
Titled “lurking about the neighbourhood”: Slave Economy and Petit Marronage in Virginia and North Carolina, 1730-1860,” this dissertation examines petit marronage, reflected in the actions of small groups of enslaved people who hid out for long periods of time in the region’s swamps and forests. Founded upon a case study of the Great Dismal Swamp, this project argues that maroons who “lurked about” remained an integral source of much needed labor, a fact that at once tied maroons to the two states’ broader slave societies while the swamp functioned as, one historian has noted, a “rival geography” that enslaved people used to resist bondage. Enslaved people were the core labor source for whites who sought to build classic plantations, such as Henry King Burgwyn of Northampton County, North Carolina. But for others, such as Dismal Swamp Land Company agent Samuel Proctor, the contradictions inherent to the fallacy of race were less of a concern. To these men, utilizing enslaved labor to develop its swamplands was of foremost importance. To negotiate the conditions of their labor, as slaves or as quasi-free men, was of utmost consequence to Virginia and North Carolina’s maroons. Because slave labor was so central to the aims of plantation owners, land company agents, and commission merchants, enslaved peoples’ resistance against outright exploitation exerted significant pressures upon slave societies. The most persistent form of this pressure was petit marronage. Local white commission merchants dispatched and hired enslaved and free blacks to perform the arduous tasks required in the production of swamp products. Some of these bondspersons fled such camps into the deepest regions of the swamp, but retained access to the broader world outside the swamp through contact with slave laborers. As a result, petit marronage provided the quintessential complication to the formations of race, slavery, and early capitalism in the lower Chesapeake and in the Albemarle. To make the case for this argument, this work is founded in a primary source base including runaway advertisements; planters’ and merchants’ records, inventories, letterbooks and correspondence; colonial, provincial and state records; abolitionist pamphlets and broadsides; slave narratives; and the records and inventories of private companies.
Leslie Alexander, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Kenneth Goings, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Margaret Newell, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
259 p.
African American Studies; African Americans; History
African American History; American History; American Slavery; American Maroons; Petit Marronage; Virginia; North Carolina; Slavery and Capitalism; Abolitionism; Great Dismal Swamp

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Nevius, M. P. (2016). “lurking about the neighbourhood”: Slave Economy and Petit Marronage in Virginia and North Carolina, 1730 to 1860 [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1460667359

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Nevius, Marcus. “lurking about the neighbourhood”: Slave Economy and Petit Marronage in Virginia and North Carolina, 1730 to 1860 . 2016. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1460667359.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Nevius, Marcus. "“lurking about the neighbourhood”: Slave Economy and Petit Marronage in Virginia and North Carolina, 1730 to 1860 ." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1460667359

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1460667359
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.